Major Realizes His Job Is Completely Irrelevant, Achieves Nirvana

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Maj. James Fitzgerald achieved Nirvana this week after realizing that his job is completely and utterly irrelevant to anything that occurs in the real world, according to sources.

Fitzgerald serves as the Assistant Section Planner for International Integration and Partnership (IIP) at US Army Forces Command (FORSCOM). Nirvana is an emotional and spiritual plane typically reserved for Buddhists that have broken the cycle of rebirth (reincarnation) through defeating passion, aversion, and ignorance, usually by practice of certain spiritual techniques.

“When I first began the job I would put in the standard 15-16 hour work days expected of a good staff major,” Fitzgerald explained, a beatific smile across his serene features.

“I’d spend an entire day painstakingly logging the amount of meetings our Colonels had with our international partners that month, then put the information into a chart, which would go into a slide, that was hidden inside a brief that the FORSCOM commander occasionally printed out and put on his coffee table.”

Fitzgerald told Duffel Blog that his marriage had begun to suffer from the long hours he put in at work, taking additional assignments upon himself to “make the shop look good” when the officers above him would leave the office early to play golf or drink at the local bar instead of doing their own tasks.

“The day it started,” he said, his entire body relaxing and appearing to achieve total oneness with his surroundings as he recalled the memory, “it was almost 2300 hours on a Friday night. I had been ordered to review all 164 slides in the semi-annual training summary update matrix presentation, to ensure that all fonts were in Calibri, and that there were no red-tinted colors, since red colors make the General nervous. I fell asleep at my desk and forgot to finish my own chart.”

Fitzgerald said he spent the next week in agony waiting for someone to realize his failure, and to be summarily fired. When that didn’t happen, Fitzgerald finally realized that nothing he said or did at his office had the slightest effect on anything.

“As soon as I understood that, it was as if an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The sun was brighter, music was more beautiful, and I finally felt as if my life was whole.”

Editor’s Note: At the time of this publication, Fitzgerald has not been to work in 27 days. No one has noticed.